Sam Ascher-Weiss

Here's a Fact: I really enjoy listening to your ReMix. Here's another Fact: me enjoying it has very little to do with whether or not I can pass it. Guess what this is? It's a Fact: The arrangement was top top top notch as far as compositional ideas although harmonically speaking you do nothing but hover around Eminor [however so does the original]. Tempo changes throughout and interaction between the parts scored with me bigtime buddy! Would you like a Fact? Here you go: The machine gun percussion at 2:22 and 3:36 has got to go. You could fix this by having these drums panned extremely in both directions [maybe they change sides every 8 hits] and you could use some velocity arks like say you have 16 of these drums hits, the velocities could go as follows: 100, 88, 74, 62, 50, 38, 26, 10, 14, 38, 50, 62, 74, 88, 100 or instead of arks you could have repeating decrescendos like 100,80,60,40,100,80,60,40..... Along with the velocity and panning you could vary the pitch of your percussion. If your software won't allow for that you could record the drums to audio and add pitchbends there and possibly some slow flange. You know what I'm in the mood for? A Fact: This ReMix does stray rather far from the original but if that were it's only problem it would still be passable. Because your samples are pretty weak, you need a larger variety of instruments in here. You use every section of the orchestra at some point but there need to be more instances when they're all there together. Your strings seem to be handling the bulk of the material in this song. Tell them to share the stage more often. From start to finish there is ALWAYS a string part present.... and in many sections they are all that is playing. Your only use of woodwinds are the pan flutes [is that what they were? It's hard to tell with these GM style samples] from 0:10 till 0:30. NO (Resubmit) Let your strings know that they don't always have to carry everyone else. Get more of the orchestra in on the action from start to finish and fix the machine gun percussion. I'm not going to hold your poor samples against you because I'm assuming they are all you have and they're not so terrible as to warrant unconditional rejection. Now GO! Do as you're told and fix the problems I mentioned so I can YES this already! Disclaimer: Things judge Shnabubula referred to as facts could arguably be called opinions instead.

I don't have the same problem with the notes at the beginning that Larry does. The song starts out suggesting the key of F with the bass moving down to E and then D. When the bass hits the E there is still an F hanging out in another instrument an octave above..... a minor 9th can be an ugly interval but this is one of those rare situations where it works by making things feel a little bit uneasy without having to leave the F major scale. When the bass makes its way back up to E the rest of the notes adjust to form an E-7 [including a B] which now suggests the key of C. The bass moves to a C yet the other instruments chose not to resolve there, instead they fade out and at 0:20 BAMN!! our suspicions are confirmed by the simple new Bass line spelling out the key of C. What's so brilliant about this is that it makes a key change of only one step in the cycle of fifths feel like much more. The hard beats in the drums are not confined to 1 and 3 or 2 and 4. It has a more loose feel and the panning helps expand on that while also making it clear that this was intentional and not a mistake. At 1:26 Larry said that "the arranged melody became very random-sounding and unfocused". I don't completely understand he meant by this. The melody clearly outlines 1,2,3,5,7 of D Dorian over the chords moving back and forth from C to Aminor. This is very similar to the type of harmonies often used in hungarian folk music. Somebody should call Hungary and tell them that their melodies are unfocused and random sounding. I love the whole section from 1:42 to 2:48 There were several discernable melodies during this period. From 1:42 to 2:03 it's G, A, D, F, E with a counter melody G, C, D, F, E entering at 1:57. At 2:03 the primary melody switches to: G, G, A, G, A, A, C,E... and the strings enter playing off the two melodic parts. Up until 2:13 this section was being driven by high hats and then at 2:14 the cool open space panned drums from earlier come in as the two melodic parts grow more developed while still outlining the original G,A,D,F,E motif. The strings playing the Quarter, Quarter, Quarter, Quarter, Dotted, Dotted, Quarter pattern along side this stuff fills in whatever gaps are left so damn well. At 2:33 the counter melody [G,C,D,F,E] leaves and is replaced by a stronger presence in the bass. This whole section just builds so wonderfully. At 3:21 the abrubt nature of the key change sounds just fine IMO. Why? It's clear to me that this effect is intentional and I will explain. The remixer moved to the key of Ab from C but for whatever reason chose to resolve there my moving to Absus4 first. The ReMixer could have gone straight to Ab if he had been trying to make a smooth transition. The choice to move to Absus4 first shows an undeniably deliberate decision to catch the listener off guard with the key change. The Db in that chord feels especially alien when coming out of Cmajor and by resolving it to a C [therefore becoming Abmajor] we immediately feel that Ab is home because rather than going straight there the ReMixer went further away so that he could resolve In the sharp direction [from a key that has more flats to one that has less] rather than in the flat direction. This is something that Beethoven did quite frequently in his later works so if it's good enough for him then it's good enough for me! From 3:29 until the end we get the first appearances of sixteenth notes in the drums. This is quite exciting and keeps things feeling fresh if Ab itself didn't do that already. This section lasts for fourty two seconds and I understand where Larry was coming from when he said this was "plodding and dragged out". It wouldn't have hurt to make this section a bit shorter not to mention the fact that the fade away ending sounds like a cop-out The flow from beggining to end is great. Lots of interesting ideas and textures. The panning rhythmically open drums and modally based rearrangement of the source were all spot on. That plus everything else I mentioned is far more than enough reason to give this a YES

The reason you don't hear cadenzas in synthesized orchestral music is because for the most part unless you have super high quality samples, the instruments are exposed for the fakers they are when left by themselves as is the case here. The trumpet comes across as very synthy in the cadenza. The ppp section at 3:00 features an unusual amount of dynamic contrast. At first it's a nice effect but it lasts for way too long however it does do a good job of setting up the ending. The accelerando at 3:56 is excellent. 80% of the song is rooted in a 3 + 3 + 2 rhythm which has a very mechanical feel. This is a bad idea when dealing with a synthesized orchestra since you want to do everything in your power to keep things from feeling mechanical. The interplay between the C Trumpet and Piccolo Trumpet sounds good for the most part though they occasionally clash like at 1:09. The interaction between them is particularly strong during the last 45 seconds of the song. The instrumentation is often pretty empty consisting only of the strings playing the 3 + 3 + 2 pattern underneath the trumpets. In a real arrangement for soloists and orchestra there is much more happening on the orchestra end of things. Mechanical rhythms, limited orchestration and too much open space [the ppp section plus the cadenza] without enough fullness to in the other sections to compensate make this a NO

I agree with Liontamer that this is way too similar to the original, the only difference being the added delay and kick drum/clapping. There's more interpretation at 1:57 with the 3/4 but the bells are constantly playing notes that disagree with everything else. From 1:57 through the end everything is way too sparse and the instruments are far too plain or as Liontamer said they sound like "default-level sounds". More Interpretation + Better Sounds + No More Bells = Problems Solved!! NO

I'm going to try to stay off this subject but I just wanna say a couple of things about the chord progressions in this song. You open up with a pretty interesting one: Amajor, Bmajor , F#major , Bmajor, F#major, Amaj7, Dbmajor, Abmajor, Dbmajor, Abmajor. Those are simple chords but the sequence is somewhat unusual and it sounds great. This continues until 1:02 where from here until the end of the song there are pretty much only two chords: Abmajor and Dbmajor [the Gb in the bass under this one should go]. A song can work with only two chords but it's especially hard to deal with coming out of such an interesting progression. It's like false advertising. That's all I'm gonna say on the theory end of things. On to the arrangement. It seems that the density of sound is consistent throughout. There is always alot going on. Every register is occupied from start to finish. There is also always one instrument playing whole notes and from 2:35 on it's a high pitched string playing C, Db, Eb, Db over and over and over and over. Try leaving some sections more open. You can have one part where nothing is happening in the bass and then another where all the action is in the lower frequencies. You could have a section where everything is staccato and then one where all the instruments are only playing half or whole notes. The point is you can't always have all of these things going on at the same time especially not for three minutes and fourty eight seconds straight. One thing you do well in this regard is occasionally removing and varying the strength of the percussion. I'd love to hear more stuff harmonically like from 0:00 to 1:02 but that's more personal and I can't fault you for choosing to stick with the Dbmajor, Abmajor thing instead. All this really needs is more clarity. Go through the song and pick out which layers are really necessary and which ones you could do without. I think there is a passable mix here but it's just being smothered right now by the constant action on all fronts. NO (Resubmit)

This song has several good ideas that are never fully developed seperated by portions of not much happening. At 0:56 it's Harpsichord VS Nasal Synth. The two of them are fighting over the same register. The nasal synth appears to have the upper hand until 1:05 when the harpischord makes a come back and eventually emerges victorious. Having two instruments both actively moving in the same register can work if (A) one of them moves slowly and consistantly while the other moves much faster ( they spend most of their time moving rhythmically in unison or © They are severely panned away from eachother. I love the ideas at 2:02. The watery percusion and the phased analog synth work very well together. Unfortunately this only lasts for 30 seconds and then the song fades away and ends. Everything up to 0:52 sound good but it doesn't get a chance to fully develop before ending at 0:52. I would suggest you continue to evolve the first section by gradually adding layers or intensifying the ones you already have. You could have this whole thing eventually build to some sort of transition into the stuff at 2:02 which could then be developed much further. As it is now your mix is but a pallet of ideas that does not stand on it's own but could be used to paint something great. NO (resubmit)

The organ and bells sound pretty weak and things get a little bit crowded every once in a while but there's plenty of stuff here that easily makes up for that. At 0:37 the filtering on the drums helps to keep things progressing just when they were starting to become somewhat monotonous. You seem to have an intuitive grasp on exactly when to change things to keep them from growing tired like at 1:07 when the switch to 6/4 comes just in the nick of time [the bass and the lead seem a little bit out of sync here]. This goes on just long enough to provide an opening for the original drum pattern to return without feeling too repetitive. Here you start to do some really strong melodic sound programming which is a welcome change from the organ and bells. At 1:36 the dotted, dotted, rest thing gets on my nerves a bit but I think that's a personal thing and it allows the piano to make an heroic entrance [yes that "an" belongs there] saving me from what almost became annoying. The layering at 2:29 works great when you remove the bass allowing us to more clearly here the rhythmic interaction between the two melodic parts and the drums but just when this starts to feel too open the bass returns. This melodic stuff remains until the end and everything builds nicely then sort of gets swept away by that swelling instrument like a giant broom brushing the song into its conclusion. The strength of this song comes from knowing when to change things in order to keep them from becoming too repetitive and great use of contrasts. YES Purple is the color of champions!

There is little interpretation of the source here however it is not a cover because many things have been loaded on top of the original stuff. The piano plays the same pattern over and over never once changing rhytmically and only rarely changing melodically. Most of the time the notes being played don't line up well with the bass and bells. In the same vein the things being layered on top of eachother are often completely unrelated and what results is a whole bunch of crowded cacophony. NO

Good Ideas.... Poor Excecution.... Too Short...... Turning the entire progression into Dminor, A7 works well especially with the accompinament figure at 0:56 outlining the chords. The melody starts to fade but then returns with the same voicings as the original now outlining Dminor and C#minor. The drumwork here is good fun for me. IN YO' FACE sixteenth notes out of nowhere when the rest of the song had a swing feel. Then the song ends having only just begun. This Ambuish the listener strategy could work well if you kept it up. Have things stay relatively plain for long stretches of time and then every once and a while SMACK 'EM UP with some wild unexpected stuff. The sounds are far too simple to be doing so little. If you want this sort of sparse instrumentation then you need your sounds to be fuller to make up for it. Just things as simple as chorus and reverb can go a long way in this direction. I would also recommend that you replace that static sound with a real snare drum. This could really turn into something special! NO

There are many things wrong with this mix. You start off with a bunch of 1 5 1 stuff in the left hand and simple chords in the right hand. The Eb Ab one [spells out a minor 7th when combined with the bass] sounds nice. Then you have your left hand playing root chord chord chord chord chord [all 2 note chords outlining triads] with a simple version of the melody in the right hand featuring the ocassional partial triad. At 1:00 you have a repetitive figure in the left hand once again consisting mostly of triad fragments. There is alot of sloppiness in the right hand here. Strangely placed accents and confused inapropriate phrasing. At 1:50 you take the 1 5 1 5 1 stuff to the extreme. This creates an incredibly bland feel. Then come some choppy sounding stuttered fifths. You continue to use these stuttered chords throughout the remainder of the piece. If you're going to use stuttered chords you must gain enough wrist strength/control to keep them from sounding so jarring. Either that or adjust the velocities after your performance. There are hardly any non triad based chords in the entire mix. The only exceptions are: at the beginning F-7 at 0:27 Csus at 1:04 Fsus2 at 3:17 Bbadd9 and at 3:56 C7b9. That's only five non triad chords in five minutes. Learn to use more than just triads especially when the source tune is this rich harmonically and find new ways to employ your left hand. You could have it play patterns that descend repeatedly rather than ones that primarily move up and then down again. You could also have it play figures that evolve as they progress rather than repeating the same pattern over every chord change until the next figure begins. There is nothing I can find in this mix that would make me give it a yes so I have to say NO Keep at it. You have a very expressive playing style that could work great if applied more effectively.

Castlevania Aria of Sorrow 2: Soma Cruz becomes Agent S and goes up against an army of evil alien Belmonts. As you mentioned the sections from 0:33 to 0:45, 2:03 to 2:16, and 2:27 to 2:40 all sound like direct quotes from the Men in Black soundtrack [the only difference being that yours moves chromatically up first instead of down]. That's a total of 0:38 seconds. The entire ReMix is 2:51. So now let's do some math. 2:51 minus 0:38 equals 2:13. One loop of the source tune takes exactly 1:37 however your ReMix is slower than the original so I estimate that if we slowed the original down to the same speed as your mix it would be approximately 1:50. That means that even if you spent every non MIB moment of your mix dealing with the source, which you do not, then you would only be spending 23 more seconds with the material than the original did. Your actual coverage of the original consists of the following: From 0:50 onwards the staccato strings [which sound detuned] doubled by a harp play the accompaniment figure from the source. Starting at 0:55 a batallion of heavily reverbed orchestral instruments play slow lines outlining the chords. There are some nice harmonies here. The orchestration is particularly good at 1:25. Very good use of brass. Excellent sounding samples. Some of this sounds like what Michiru herself might of done had she chosen to orchestrate this piece. At 1:50 the main melody comes in with some charleston timpanis. You never leave the Fminor G/F Gb/F F progression here. There is alot more happening harmonically in this section of the original. That's it! That's pretty much all you use from the source. There are another 50 seconds of material in the original that you never even touch. Your orchestration relies heavliy on the quality of your samples and reverb in order to make up for the lack of complexity. This alone is not reason enough for a rejection. All you need to do is pay more attention to the original and this would be fine. NO

Great work.... now finish it! The simple 80's style synth works great here, especially the chords that come in at 1:27. The drums are pretty plain but they carry things along well with just enough variation though the constant high hats can become piercing at times but it's not something that needs to be fixed in order for the mix to pass. The rapid drum hits at 1:51 sound excellent and fit in perfectly with the whole 80's vibe. Fading in the synth line before 1:56 is a great way to introduce that part, allowing us to hear it by itself before it joins the ensemble making things fuller yet never too crowded. At 2:54 when everything gets quiter and the piano takes center stage you have created an ideal situation for a transposition. It's a corny arrangement technique but this is one of those times when it would really work. At 3:23 you could bring the whole thing up to Eb with the original synth resuming it's role. You could then bring the drums back but have them play emphasises half as often as they did before.. that doesn't mean they slowdown it just means that the hard beats only come half as frequently. After about a minute of that you could switch the drums back to the way they were before maybe using something like what's at 1:51 to smooth over the transition adding another synth layer. At this point you'd be at about 4:30 and you could start to think about ending things. Obviously this is just one of many possiblities but you must do something to continue the developement and a transposition could help set things on the right path. I really like what you've got so far so please finish it up and send it back. NO (Resubmit)

I think the intro works great. It allows the listener to be caught off guard by the intensity that follows thrusting them headlong into the mix. Fun effect! I really enjoyed the soloing from 2:11 to 2:35 and from 2:50 to 3:11 right after the sweet fast paced kick snare kick snare stuff. Even though there is little phrasing and almost no movement in larger than major 2cnd increments, the energy behind it is infectious. That goes for the rest of the track as well. Not much complexity but there is nothing that doesn't work and lots of stuff that does, first and foremost being the contagious adrenaline charged atmosphere created by the song. YES

Yay Drumloops!! Those ride cymbals are really monopolizing the aural spectrum and there are only two distinct drum patterns in the entire song. I play pulsewidth modulating bass in attack mode! Your analog sounds are simplistic and worse the only depth of timbre comes from envelopes that are all exactly the same length. Write your own drums, work on the complexity of your sounds and do more to interpret the source. You'd be in much better shape if you did. For what it's worth I enjoyed the energetic nature of the mix. NO

The Section from 1:14 to 1:35 is Hillarious! Sixteenth note high hats, kicks every quarter note and snares every other quarter note all heavily reverbed with a slow moving filter sweep in the second half. It's like being trapped inside of an evil drum machine. I could imagine a whole mix being developed around this claustrophobic feel... the same sort of drums but with fast moving ambient pads with 1/16th synced LFOs being cross panned against eachother. That would be crazy! But that's not what happened here. The rest of the mix is overly chaotic without any real cohesive elements to make sense of it all. Like Gray said this mix sounds flooded and is conceptually undeveloped. But you have inspired me so thanks for that NO

I HEARD YOU THE FIRST TIME! 0:43-0:56. I counted this section being repeated 8 times and this section in itself is really one thing repeated twice with a different ending the second time so that means one part of this is repeated 16 times. Several other parts of the song were also copied and pasted throughout sometimes adding a simple yet heavily reverbed string part. The piano, as gray and liontamer said, sounds very mechanical which is made worse by the repetition because not only are the notes identical in each section but they sound EXACTLY THE SAME since there is no variation in timing, timbre or velocity. Simplistic arrangement, way too much repetition and the robotic sounding performance make this a definite NO

Good Effort! I am confused as to your reasoning for the new chord progression. It seems to me that it was done mostly to make the song easier to play because you moved it to E which is much less difficult on the guitar than Eb. Your new progression is really just four chords long: Emaj7 Amaj7[this is an A-6 every once in a while] C#-7 Amaj7. If you are using these new chords because the original ones are too difficult for you to play then I would suggest you find a source tune that is not quite so demanding. If not then I strongly urge you to listen to the original more carefully. The arrangement is also pretty repetive and is limited to adding drums at 1:48 and then removing them from 3:33 until 3:58. Here are some options. If you do not want to change the progression you're using for whatever reason, find other ways to make up for it. You could have the instrumentation of the melody change up more frequently or possibly add some more harmony parts. Another way to make this progression more interesting without changing it would be to switch the notes in the bass from the root to the fifth, major third, or even a whole step above the root [in the case of the C#-7 you would use a perfect fourth above the root instead]. For example the Amaj7 could have a C#, E or B in the bass, the Emaj7 could have a G#, B, or F# and the C#-7 could have E, G# or F#. Just making these substitutions every once in a while could go a long way. Finally to make the arrangement more exciting the very least you could do would be to spend more time working on the drum part. Have it change up more often. My own personal preference would require alot more variation than that but the song would be nearly passable with just more complex drumwork. Overall I agree with Liontamer in that it would probably be a good idea to move on at this point. The stuff I suggested could really be applied to any song and I think it would be easier to work with a clean slate. I get the feeling that you have alot of passion behind your music so I'm looking foward to hearing some more polished stuff from you in the future. NO

Glorified rip huh? Liontamer since you claim this is a near-violation I feel I'm going to have to go out of my way to prove why it is not. From the beginning until 0:30 the melody is played with just the bass in the strings. The strings played chords here in the original. Also there is some ornamentation in the "double delay" piano that is nowhere to be found in the original. At 0:30 the melody is repeated this time with the harp playing a counter melody not found in the original. Here's the brilliant part. He keeps any one instrument from playing chords and allows the harp, piano, melody strings and bass strings to dance around the harmonies creating a full yet open sound. At 0:53 this is continued where the high string part comes in to help flesh things out with out ever having to play a full chord on it's own. None of that is in the original. In the original the clarinet plays a standing harmony part that follows the melody around and a harp is very busy doing it's best to fill in any missing notes. Much different feel created by that. But wait there more!! At 1:00 the mixer uses nothing but a melody doubled an octave above, a strong bass line and one harmony part combined with some effusive perscussion to create a huge sound. Where is this sort of subtlety in the original? The contrast at 1:15 works perfectly. What we feel we lose in power from the quieter dynamic is instantly compensated for by an energetic obligato figure in the harp doubled by some staccato strings. I have scoured the original yet I have been completely unable to find this obligato part. At 1:30 the obligato part is joined by more "double delay" piano and an improvisational form of the melody played by the guitar which actually does come in at first sounding like a bowed string instrument. I love that effect. I must emphasize this point again. NEVER DOES A SINGLE INSTRUMENT PLAY A FULL CHORD! That takes so much more planning to pull off properly and this mix just absolutely nails it. Starting at 2:25 I no longer have to prove that this is not a cover because Liontamer claims that after this point it is not a glorified rip. At 2:25 the trombone in the bass and a timpani crescendo make me think it's going to break into something like what's at 1:00 but instead we get some staccato string stuff with each note sounding isolated and deliberate which is great coming out of a passage that was much more flowing. At 2:43 a third staccato string part enters. This part plays perfectly off the other two creating a full sound again while only having to use 3 instruments and never resorting to making them play chords by themselves. At 2:57 the mixer pastes the section from 1:00 and then ends with the double delay piano part by itself. I suppose this ending could have been stronger but it works reasonably well and it is not a serious enough detractor to take away from all the great stuff earlier in the piece. The orchestration is very original in that it never has any single intrument play a chord yet the harmonies are made apparent by the interaction between the multiple parts. There is a wonderfull give and take aspect of this mix where when one musical element leaves it is replaced by something else allowing things to progress nicely from start to finish without having to just build and build and build. The sounds themselves do not bother me the way they did liontamer so I have no objection there. YES

FUNNY! Unlike Zyko I feel no need to justify this vote. There are no problems with the mix.... It's that simple. It is musically boring but that really has nothing to do with the point of this song and from 2:03 onwards I actually got into the multiple vocal track hotness. This whole thing is just so full of charm. What's not to Love? There is no reason to say no and many reasons to say yes so... YES British People RULE!

There are a couple serious harmonic flubs in the earlier portion of this song and a several more towards the end. 1:30 thanks to reverb the G is still present over the Emajor Triad here and it does not sound like a #9th. It sounds like a mistakenly placed minor third. 2:27 reverb cannot explain this one. Some of your instruments resolve to A while everyone else resolves to F#. Quite unpleasant. If there were tons of polytonal harmonies all over the place this would make more sense but right now it just sounds like an ametuerish mistake. 4:57 same exact problem as at 2:27 5:12 Piano plays a C# Triad while everyone else is playing A/C# ouch! 5:16 Piano plays G#minor triad which spells out an Emaj7 while the melody has a D suggesting Edominant. This is just plain sloppy 5:18 same thing as 5:12 5:24 same thing as 5:12 and 5:18 5:36 same thing as 5:12, 5:18 and 5:24 This stuff alone is more than enough reason for a rejection so I won't even get into the arrangement issues. NO

That's Five Minutes right there and I'd say atleast two and a half of them were well worth listening to but there is way too much water in this lemonade son! 0:00-0:40 Bottled Water 0:40-1:15 Fresh Squeezed Lemon Juice and sugar 1:15-1:59 Tap Water 2:00-2:05 Gourmet Dj Scratch Artificial Sweetener 2:06-2:21 Flavored Mineral Water 2:22-3:00 Rhythmically Varied Interestingly developed Lemony Sugar 3:00-3:33 Repetitive Water Scooped out of a Toilet Bowl 3:34-END Lemon and Lime compositional power. Except for the bottled water used to warm up your audience I don't see the need for the rest of these flat portions of the mix. There is some really tight stuff happening in the good sections. Bassline and drum interaction, grating yet well used sounds, and the ocassional departure from Bminor. Ultimately I'm with Liontamer in that I really really wanted to give this a yes but those water section are so stagnant and undeveloped. It feels like this song was a collaboration between a good ReMixer and his narcoleptic twin. That's Right I SAID IT! NO

Oh man this is painfull for me to do! I really loved the sound of this, the percussion is tight, everything flows perfectly. SO WHAT'S THE PROBLEM SAM?? I'LL TELL YOU! The source material seems arbitrary in this piece. Part of the purpose of OCR is to honor game music and you have basically just taken one motif from the song and used it to hold everything else together. This mix would sound just as good with pretty much any simple melodic figure playing throughout! There's a reasonable amount of variation on this ONE part of the theme. You'll notice that the original gives you alot more to work with. All this needs to pass in my book is more use of the source material. Let me hear some of that bridge. Convince me that you have some respect for Uematsu and you're not just using him as a platform to show off your skillz. so I guess that's a NO Also WTF is with the Buju Banton? <- Aka Chipmunk Reggae

TASTY OH SO TASTY! There is a ton of great stuff in this song. The source tune is simple but you used it very well. I would have liked to hear some more harmonic variation but It is not a necessity. I love the range in the percussive instruments. While the rhythmic patterns don't really change that often, the sounds themsevles are switched up just enough to keep me interested The effects starting at 1:30 are used tastefully and work very well in the context of this mix. That stuff keeps me from missing the drums when they become subdued and then when they return in full force they feel fresh and sexy again! I really like the sixteenth note white/pink noise stuff that starts at 2:45 [Even though that stuff first comes in at 2:15 it's not really audible untill 2:45]. You showed alot of restraint up untill that point so when we finally get some rhythmic excitement it's all the more satisfying! YES

inkbot's avatar is disturbing on many levels

Edit 3: Okay now I'm sort of lost. Why are you insulting my composing? You might be a genius musician Krale. Seriously you could be a brilliant composer/performer.... I'm not saying any thing about that. I'm just saying you're confused about the issue of time signature. The reason I'm arguing about that is because I want people to apreciate what a master piece Zue [the original] is and you are down playing it. As for my performing experience/composing/schooling I have sent you a private message concerning it since I don't think that belongs in the forum [and it does not help prove my point about ZUE] I'm just fanatical about Miyoko Kobayashi and I hate to see her misrepresented. PS: Who is Chopan.... I have never heard of this person. Is he at all connected to the polish composer Chopin??? Ok that was too far... but I couldn't help myself. PPS: I was using the slang term ritarded meaning mentally handicapped. I was basically saying it would sound stupid. I was not talking about slowing the tempo